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Google Books – Online Literature Library

admin — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 10:13:27 +0000

The idea of Google Books was first conceived in 2002 when a small group of Google programmers started pondering the question of how many man hours it would take to scan every single book ever written. We still don’t know the true answer to this question although just eight years from the idea conception there are now over 10 million books catalogued in their database.

While the first scan was done manually on a 300 page book and took 40 minutes to process, Google now use cameras capable of scanning at a rate of 1,000 pages an hour and also work with 20,000 publisher partners who provide content directly. They have also been able to provide over 1 million books that can be read in full from cover to cover; these unrestricted works are either books that have fallen out of copyright or have been provided with publishers express permission.

As well as simply scanning the books, Google performs OCR (Optical Character Recognition) on the pages, thereby turning them in to pure text which can be entered in to their database. As a result when you do a Google Search you are now not only returned results from relevant websites but also your search terms are checked against a library encompassing millions of books and appropriate matches are suggested for further reading.

The integration in to the Google Search engine means you may have already inadvertently stumbled across Google Books but if you haven’t and are eager to explore then the Google Books can be found by visiting the site http://books.google.co.uk/ directly. Being a Google service, it almost goes without saying that the service is completely free of charge and is instead paid for via a minimal number of sponsored links which are in no way intrusive or detrimental to the service.

From the Google Books site you can perform searches, add books to your virtual library or organise your collection in a logical manner. Searching for a book and then subsequently clicking on it opens an interface which allows you to either view the directly scanned pages from the book or in some instances a ‘plain text’ version. This plain text can then be copied and passed to another application or simply printed out for reading offline.

Books still under copyright enjoy the protection of a variety of access limitations and security measures which limit the number of viewable pages making the experience somewhat akin to being able to flick through the first couple of pages in a library or bookshop. Despite this protection there have rather predictably been a number of fairly major lawsuits issued by individuals and publishers alike; some with legitimate grievances and others just seeking money or publicity.

Possibly the most notable case was between The Authors Guild, the publishing industry and Google which resulted in Google agreeing to a settlement on October 28, 2008. This would see them pay a total $125 million not only to pay the court costs of the plaintiffs but also create a Book Rights Registry which will collect and disburse revenue generated by all third party sites such as Google which provide content based on the content of books covered by the agreement.

These issues aside, on the whole I am amazed that again this relatively new company have been able to offer such an incredible gift to the world. With Google Books we have the potential to preserve centuries of human literacy work for generations to come as well as promoting the spread and availability of knowledge amongst all groups and all classes of people.

Making the most of Google

admin — Sat, 17 Mar 2007 15:48:32 +0000

Whilst the development of the Google search engine has been pretty stagnant recently it is still my search engine of choice and this week I’ll be telling you how to get the most from it. I’m sure all of you at one stage or another have used Google (www.google.co.uk) although by just using limited search terms you are restricting the features on offer to you. Please note that the inverted commas are just used for the basis of making this article a little clearer and you wouldn’t type them in to Google.

- The most basic feature is to simply type in your search phrase – ‘herald express click article’ for example which will return a list of pages that contain some or all of those terms.

- If you type a phrase in to Google in between a pair of quotation marks then only pages with that exact phrase will be returned so “herald express” would only return webpages that had the words ‘herald’ and ‘express’ right next to one another

- You can use synonyms of words in a search so for example of you were searching for ‘house’ but also wanted your search results to include the word ‘home’ too then you should do a search for ‘~house’.

- Using two dots between two numbers will cover an entire number range. So, say for example you type in ‘2000..2007’ then Google will return results including the numbers 2000, 2001, 2002 and so on.

- One particularly useful feature I find is the define operator which allows you to look up word definitions directly from the search engine itself. For example, if you type in ‘define:dodecahedron’ then Google will return the definition of the twelve faced shape.

- Google has a relative amount of AI which allows you to find concise answers to questions by just typing them straight in – for example ‘When was Richard Branson born?’ will just return the text ‘Richard Branson – Date Of Birth : 18 July 1950’

- Google includes a useful calculator which can be accessed directly from the search page. Do a search for ‘1+2’ for example and Google will return the answer ‘3’ and whilst this isn’t particularly useful the feature does get a little more advanced. If you type in ‘1lb in stone’ for example then Google will return ‘1 pound = 0.0714 stone’ and likewise ‘$1 in £’ will return ‘US$ = 0.5180 UK£’.

- You are welcome to use wildcard expressions in Google if you forget one particular word of a phrase. This could be particularly helpful for example if I forgot the exact lyrics of the Pink Floyd’s ‘Another Brick In The Wall’ as I could type in ‘we don’t need * education’ and Google would then return results with that exact phrase but would make the likely substation of the asterisk for the word ‘no’.

One nice feature in my opinion is the ‘personalised home’ page of Google which can be accessed when you’re on the Google homepage. Using this feature I have now added ‘quotes of the day’, ‘BBC News’ and ‘Word of the Day’ to Google so now whenever I open my browser I am given these nuggets of information along with the usual ability to search.

Search Engine Optimising #2

admin — Sat, 17 Jan 2004 17:28:36 +0000

Last week we started talking about how you can get your site listed well on the major search engines by following just a few simple rules, starting with how to optimise your page to be seen through the eyes of a search engine. This week we’re moving on by assuming that your site is now optimised but not listed and so we’ll be covering the tactics involved in getting the search engines to pay you that important initial visit. Listen closely and all will become clear.

- Arrange reciprocal links. Many search engines find sites to add to their databases through jumping from site to site by following links from another page. For example if I were to put a link to you on my page then eventually most the search engines that use ‘spiders’ should find you just by jumping on to your page from the link I’ve placed on mine. In addition, reciprocal links are used to measure how ‘important’ a site is by the Google search engine; a page like www.microsoft.com will be seen as being much more important as 2 million websites link to it than someone selling Microsoft software who only has 10 links.

Reciprocal links are easy to build up; just ask various site owners whether they’d be willing to trade a link with you on their link page. Quite simply you place a link to their page and they’ll place one to yours.

- Submit to major search engines. Most of the major search engines have a link somewhere on their page that you can use to request that they take a look at your page at some point. There are no guarantees as to when this will be but just submit your site and then forget about it; they’ll get around to it eventually, usually within 6 weeks or so.

- Add your site to Dmoz. Google likes a directory called www.dmoz.org and regularly scans it for links to add to its database as well as giving existing websites in its database slightly higher priority than those not listed. Dmoz is a volunteer run website directory and it just so happens that I’m the category editor for the local area (Paignton Business & Economy); if you need a site added then as long as it meets their criteria I will add it for you.

- Pay for inclusion. Some sites such as Ask Jeeves request that you pay them to include you in their databases; this can often be a good idea although only pay to be added to major search engines and not just any one that comes your way otherwise you could waste thousands. Usually the fee is quite low but be careful if the search engine in question starts talking triple figures.

- Don’t use automatic submission software. Steer clear of software or websites that claim to submit your site to thousands of search engines in minutes; once upon a time I was falling for this trick and it did absolutely nothing for me. Manually submit your site to all the major search engines and arrange a reciprocal links program as shown above and sooner or later the majority of the smaller ones should pick you up without the need for useless software.

Remember that between submitting your site to a search engine and them actually indexing it can take months. In all reality the only search engine that can make or break a business at the moment is Google so spend the majority of your time satisfying him as once sorted your website should flourish.